Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution specifically entrusts both Houses of Congress with all legislative powers, delegating them to be trusted stewards for how our money is spent— yet we’re $36 trillion dollars in debt and paying $2.6 billion per day in interest charges.

What the hell do Congresspeople and Senators do all day?

Some thoughts?

Wake up and have a personal wardrobe consultant select today’s business look based on whether today is a high-visibility day in front of cameras or a schedule full of 12-minute round robin opportunities to look great and repeat your talking points to the usual White House reporters after which your communications and PR teams rapidly package those soundbites into fundraising campaigns. I don’t refer to these as interviews anymore, now admittedly having been spoiled by Joe Rogan and other long format podcast hosts with interviews that can last for hours.

For men it would include a brilliant white, custom fit collared shirt, a pristine tie-knot, and a dark colored fitted suit, impeccably pressed. We’ll not speak much about the gentleman from Pennsylvania, other than I had an Uncle Chuckie who was blessed with an enormous upper body and the skinniest pin legs you could imagine. Watching him dressed in basketball shorts and a two-strapper tee shirt at a casual barbeque was a sight to see. Fifty years ago, Uncle Chuckie realized his business career was going nowhere, and found a Big and Tall men’s shop. When he attended a family event in a suit or wore a sports jacket and dress pants, or even when he played a round of golf with business associates, he looked great. There are so many options available today instead of a hoodie, crappy shorts, and sneakers. ‘Nuff said.

For women, a beautiful skirt or dress, or a pantsuit topped with a classy sports jacket. Well done make-up that fully covers the face and emphasizes the eyes, yet somehow forgets the neck, providing a nice two-tone image.

A workday consisting of some meetings, some party conferences, maybe an occasional visit from a constituent visiting D.C. for the first time.

Yet, there’s always time for meetings with campaign donors and lobbyists. You know, the people who tell you if you vote a certain way on a certain piece of legislation, your kids will be able to attend private school, your spouse will lead a worthy charitable cause and along the way take home a hefty salary, your brothers and your sister (along with their families), will, as George Carlin once said, get invited into the Big Club.

Most people I know are trying to budget and manage their money to make a nice life for themselves and their families, including business owners, who are working to keep their business thriving and their employees employed. Most people, with a functioning brain, understand that continuing to spend money you don’t have or you’re not able to pay back always turns out badly.

Except Congress. Because they’re spending our tax dollars and not their own personal money, Congress continues to spend what we don’t have. In FY 2024, the federal government spent $6.75 trillion, and collected $4.92 trillion in revenue. Congress spent $1.83 trillion dollars more than they brought in, resulting in a deficit.

For FY 2025, we’re off to a great start having already spent $1.15 trillion dollars more than we have collected in revenue. Spend more money in one year than the revenue you brought in = deficit spending.

Let’s say a family has a combined annual income of $85,000. Yet, during the year, they charged up their credit cards, took an auto loan, and made other purchases. In total, they spent $145,000. They’d find themselves in a difficult position. Imagine if they did that every year, and the total amount of money they owed continued to grow year after year. The total amount of money they owed would be their debt.

What happens to members of Congress when they spend more money than we have year after year?

The answer is nothing, which is why our national debt currently stands at $36 trillion. Imagine the national debt like a credit card balance when you don’t pay off the full balance each month. Make a new $500 purchase on your card and pay the $39.99 minimum payment due. What happens to your balance? It continues to grow, and so do interest charges.

The cost of new purchases exceeding the amount you paid represents a deficit, while accumulated deficits over time (your balance) represents a person’s overall debt.

If you or I maxed out our credit cards and we were not able to make the extraordinarily high minimum payment, what would the banks do? They’d cancel the cards, pursue us legally, and destroy our credit rating.

What happens when Congress does the same? Nothing. There’s no max. They continue to spend without paying down the balance, currently at $36 trillion, which continues to incur interest charges that we, the people, are responsible for paying off.

Today, the interest charges on our $36 trillion national debt is approaching almost $1 trillion dollars a year, about $2.6 billion dollars per day (as noted earlier).

In comparison, we spend about $850 billion per year on defense, and about $600 billion per year on Medicaid. Interest payments on our national debt now accounts for the largest component of our federal spending. Think about that. The single largest expenditure of the United States is paying interest on the debt we created. This is not a Democrat versus Republican thing. Both parties have been screwing this up for years.

Did we really need Elon and team to catapult in and expose massively staggering ridiculous expenses Congress continues to fund if Congress were truly acting as trusted stewards of our tax dollars?

Why would these super-sophisticated, well-educated, always re-elected legislators not be hard at work getting this issue fixed?  Are they brain-damaged and just not capable of understanding you can’t continue to spend money you don’t have? Or maybe the best they’re capable of is a 12-minute TV appearance with a friendly news anchor, just enough time to smile, toss out a few talking points and buzzwords, and pretend they’re smart. Or is it because they just don’t give a damn and retaining membership in the Big Club is their sole priority?

So the next time you see these well-dressed, well-coifed, well-scripted and well-rehearsed civil servants smiling for the cameras, ask yourself, what are these people doing besides stuffing their pockets full of our money, taking care of their friends and their families, and why are they not working their collective asses off to improve the financial condition of our country for the future and the betterment of our children and grandchildren?

Or better yet, let’s see which, if any, have the balls to sit with Rogan for three hours, discuss root causes in detail, and provide their plan to work across the aisle and with the president and his economic team to correct.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.